Getting help to finance your project

ESA may grant tailored ESA Promotion Support as an incentive to commercial projects. Promotion Support can take several forms: co-funding, deferred payments and price reduction, provision of hardware, services and human resources. The Promotion Support is in principle restricted to the space-related element of the project and limited to 50 percent of the related cost.

Who is eligible for Promotion Support?

ESA is an inter-governmental organisation responsible to the taxpayers of its Member States regarding the way it uses its resources. Therefore, ESA may only grant ESA Promotion Support to customers from those ESA Members States that contribute to the ISS Exploitation Programme.

These are Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Customers from other ESA Member States or from any other country may still obtain some form of Promotion Support from the Co-operation Agreement Partners.

Obtaining Promotion Support

In order to obtain Promotion Support, the customer must express a formal request in the Commercial Proposal, define the kind of Promotion Support which is needed and attach a detailed Business Plan to the Commercial Proposal.

Criteria for Promotion Support

The request will be analysed according to the following criteria:

The general solidity of your Commercial Proposal;

The viability of your Business Plan;

The technical, ethical and financial criteria set forth in the ESA document on Evaluation Procedure.

The granting of Promotion Support may imply contractual negotiation about Intellectual Property Rights, where customers may have to commit to certain royalties or fees to ESA.